Friday, September 28, 2007

‘The most expensive public works project in the US was today in disarray after it emerged that a planned giant nuclear dump would be located on a faultline.

Rock samples from deep within Yucca Mountain, in Nevada, showed that the fault runs directly beneath the site where the US federal government planned to store 70,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste.

More than $8bn (£4bn) has already been spent on the $58bn project, which had been due to open in 2017, but the proposals – approved by George Bush in 2002 – may now have to be redrawn.

Samples taken from 76 metres below the surface of the mountains, which are around 90 miles north-west of Las Vegas, revealed that the Bow Ridge fault passes hundreds of metres to the east of where scientists believed it lay.’